Baking therapy

I have written about how the boys love to garden.  We work in the garden every day.  This week we had about 2 cups of raspberries that I was able to hide from Matthew.  I bought the other 4 cups.

The boys and I made raspberry jelly Friday night.

We poured the raspberries in a pot.  Jon used a potato masher to mash the raspberries.

Next we poured 4 cups of sugar in the pot.

Last we stirred the raspberries and sugar.  I did most of this since I didn't want the boys to get hurt.

I stirred it until it stuck to the a spoon.  Then put it in a canning jar.

We used the raspberry jelly to make cupcakes yesterday.  It was a rainy day and the boys were boarded.

We adapted this recipe and made lemon cupcakes with a raspberry filling and lemon butter cream icing.

I made the cupcake recipe.

And by doing so got our hands a bit dirty.  This was a sensory activity.

After they were done baking and cooling we cored out the center.  The boys loved eating the cupcake holes as they called them.

Next we filled with the raspberry jelly we made on Friday.

We had to use fine motor skills to do this as he had to squeeze the bag to get the jelly out.  This was also a sensory activity for Chris since he hates getting sticky things on his fingers.

I adapted the Wilton buttercream recipe a bit to make it work with this lemon raspberry cupcake.

I added 1/2 cup more of 10X sugar, lemon juice from 1 lemon, and about a teaspoon of lemon extract.  I also tinted it a light yellow using food coloring.

I practiced my decorating since I'm still learning and decorated the cupcakes 2 ways.

The cupcakes seemed to taste better when refrigerated.  I put the in overnight.

While we were making the jelly we talked about colors and textures.  While making the cupcakes we talked about colors, measurements, textures, hot vs. cold and how they tasted.  I think the highlight for the boys was when I squirted some of the left over icing in their mouths!